A Man of Words
by Krissy Mae Anderson
Summary: Jack's life, before and after death. Ch. 2.  'I went to war when I was a boy. I was with my best friend.'
1. A man of words and not of deeds

_"A Man of Words" by Krissy Mae Anderson_

**Summary: **Jack's life, before and after death.**  
Rating: **T**  
Spoilers:** Most of the Dr. Who episodes with Jack and a good deal of Torchwood episodes up to date.**  
Disclaimer: **Jack's not mine, and neither are any other Doctor Who or Torchwood characters.**  
Acknowledgments: **to _batmite_, for catching a rather creative typo, and to Debris K for her beta skillz.**  
Author's note: **This story was inspired by a somewhat morbid nursery rhyme that I came upon one day. It's somewhat AU-ish in nature as well.

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**A man of words and not of deeds / Is like a garden full of weeds  
**

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Jack is born 194 953 years before he dies, and he later reflects that it would make one hell of a gravestone, especially since he has only really lived 37 years. One day when he is feeling rather morbid, on a rainy Tuesday morning in 1929, he writes his own obituary on the back of a napkin. _Homeless and timeless and nameless. A good-for-nothing and a runaway. Survived by no one — no one who hasn't abandoned him, at least. Lived too much and not enough. Better off dead._ Jack borrows an ornate lighter from a British tourist sitting at the next table and burns the napkin, watches it curl up and darken and become ashes. 

The decadence of the Twenties is about to become the misery of the Thirties, and Jack meanders aimlessly between continents and countries, between prisons and hotels, and watches Earth tear itself apart yet again. He can't keep himself idle for too long, though, and soon he's in Spain, dying and dying and dying for Madrid, a pointless battle that only he knows the outcome of. After the International Brigades withdraw, he leaves with them, and fate, that cruel lady, manages to eventually lead him to London during the Blitz, this time into the gentle hands of Estelle Cole. She makes him feel warm inside again after many years of cold, empty darkness, and reminds him of Rose in some strange way, although she looks (and acts) nothing like her.

Jack is in love with her before he can stop himself — Estelle's wide-eyed and innocent, and believes in the good of this world, even when she is crouching in the bomb shelter with Jack as the building shakes around them. This love is nothing like he has felt before — not his usual lust, not the carefully planned dance he had with Rose, not the intense desire with the barest hint of apprehension he'd felt for the Doctor. It's gentle and slow and fragile, and Jack treasures the moments they spend together, because he knows that their relationship will not last, that Estelle's life is nothing more than a flower doomed to bloom and wilt and in the end, become dust, like everything around him. "My good Jack," Estelle whispers to him as the bombs explode around them, and he tells her that one person's good can be somebody else's evil, but she doesn't believe him. She sees only good in him, and maybe it's what he needs, someone to ignore all of his bad deeds, because even the Devil needs some sympathy once in a while.

"We'll be with each other till we die," they whisper solemnly to each other when they're lying together in the darkness, and Jack feels dirty inside when he says it, because he is already dead, but the least he can do is be with Estelle when she goes, and he tells himself he isn't really lying. He will look her up one day in the future, spin a tale about being his own son or grandson, and be there for her when she breathes her final breath. Estelle scratches bloody furrows across his shoulder blades as she thrashes in the throes of bliss she has not known before this night, and Jack shoves all thoughts of death out of his mind and devotes himself to pleasuring her, hoping desperately that this is how she will remember him, that she won't let this memory drown in bitterness, that eventually the hurt will be repressed by a fond memory of an incredible night in a small, stuffy hotel room which is all that he can give her. Soon they part, Estelle looking ridiculously like a small girl in her oversized coat and slouch hat when Jack takes her to the train station. She gives Jack a perfumed handkerchief and asks him to look her up after the war, fighting tears. Jack gives her a photograph taken only a few days before - the two of them beautiful and elegant and timeless - kisses her on the cheek, and doesn't promise anything.

Jack leaves England the next day to avoid running into himself, because causing time paradoxes isn't something he's into, and after all, there's penance to be done, penance for his cruelty and vanity and arrogance and most of the deadly sins thrown in - and in 1941, penance is easy to come by. It is such a familiar year to him, but this time it's different, no more a dazzling girl, but a murderous hag instead. _No more glamor_, Jack thinks as he spits out some French mud. _No more fast talking and tall tales and a fast buck,_ but mud and blood and death, death everywhere Jack looks. Jack's tongue has usually been his main weapon, but now his gun is much more useful. In Madrid, he used to feel guilty for killing the enemy, but now he kills without remorse, and it scares him more than he can admit to himself.

**to be continued... **


	2. And when the weeds begin to grow

**Acknowledgments: **thanks to Debris K for giving this a read-through and telling me it didn't suck like a thousand vacuum cleaners!

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**And when the weeds begin to grow / It's like a garden full of snow**

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Jack fights and fights and fights until the day he wakes up naked in a pile of dead bodies, his stomach on fire, and realizes that he has starved to death. He climbs out of the pit and walks off into the night, nothing more than a ghost, a soldier no more. No, Jack decides, he will never fight again unless he's in charge, he's had enough of orders to last him a lifetime. He's been taking orders for almost a hundred years now, and it's time to grow up, time to start giving them. Jack returns to England just before V-Day, and takes a job with an organization that doesn't exist, just him in a little Welsh shack, his bosses blissfully unaware that they have just hired a former companion of Enemy Number One. Jack spends his days investigating strange happenings around Wales and spends his nights thinking of the past, because he can tell that the future he wishes for is painfully far away and his present utterly empty. One particular event from the past keeps coming back to him, night after night. Most of Jack's friends – and there has only been a handful of them in all of time – don't know the first thing about Jack beyond the flashy smile and a few carefully selected bits of his biography that he chooses to reveal - 51st century, rather flexible, charming, suave and prone to a good con now and then. Jack rarely lets less-than-perfect bits of himself show through, and almost never speaks of the past. Rose and the Doctor have changed him, made him a better man, but even they have never learned the deep, dark secret that made Jack who he is.

When he looks at himself at the mirror he sometimes sees himself in the future, lifetimes ago, in the time before he became Jack Harkness, or even Jack: an awkward skinny boy with a dreadful name, fed up with his happy, boring existence, longing for an adventure. Everyone around him is content with their calm, perfect way of life, but Jack feels trapped, because it is not his time or place. He needs excitement and danger, and Boeshane is just not the place for it. It's a paradise on earth, or rather on Ildorgar, an Earth colony halfway across the galaxy. Its architects have chosen none of the bad traits of the mother planet – there are no earthquakes, tsunamis or volcanic eruptions, and the sky is always blue except for the planned rain cycles. Jack longs for unplanned thunderstorms and giant waves, strong winds and baking-hot sun, anything to give him the thrill he desires. He wants to be so cold he can't feel his fingertips and he wants to know what a bad sunburn feels like. Thankfully, he's not alone in his rebellion, because there is also Dal. Dal is bigger and stronger and handsomer, but he's mesmerized by Jack, who makes up for everything he's yet lacking with his personality. They've grown up together, and they know each other better than anyone else, better than their own families. Dal starts sentences and Jack finishes them, they think and feel and perceive everything as one. Jack loves Dal, and Dal loves him back, and even though they only ever kiss when their play-wrestling gets out of hand, Jack knows that one day there will be more than awkward kisses.

Jack loves watching Dal swim - Dal's grace never fails to astound him, and he watches, breathless, as Dal goes for his daily swim in the sea. Jack's own paddling is rather graceless – he looks like a drowning dog when he's in the water, and Dal teases him that people can probably see him splashing from the orbital station. They have their favorite spot by the seaside – a small cove far away from the town, and it's there they learn the first news of the War when Jack pulls a holoreader from his pocket and motions Dal to sit next to him. They stare at the screen together, the same thought forming in their minds – a chance for the voyage they have always dreamed of, a chance to get off Ildorgar and see the universe. Dal isn't sure about it at first, but Jack insists that it will be the adventure they have wished for all their lives, and before the day is through they've already agreed to run away by the end of the week, just before school starts again. The next day is spent stealing rusty weapons from sheds, recruiting other guys to go with them and robbing pantries and fridges. Their plans are nearly upset by an over-curious mother, but Jack manages to sweet-talk her just when she's about to call his parents, and for that heroic deed he's elected the leader of their motley band.

They run away at dawn, in a half-broken-down ship with a wonky hyperdrive that is too small for six teenagers. It takes them a week to reach the planet where major battles are currently being fought, and they are recruited immediately, because young, brave kids are always in demand. They are assigned as a squad in the fifteenth brigade, and when they have to pick someone as squad leader it's five votes for Jack and one for Dal. Jack's pleasantly surprised but he accepts the honor and a month later they're the best squad in the entire brigade and their faces are to be put on the recruitment images for the entire galaxy – a reward for their stellar service. Jack smiles for the imager but inside he's a little bit afraid of what his family will think when they see his face splashed all over PlanetWeb. Well, they won't be able to do anything about it when he gets back, Jack says to himself – he'll be sixteen then, and he'll be a hero. He imagines coming home with Dal, hand in hand, and long, slow afternoons by the seashore, and he doesn't regret his decision to run away anymore. The War feels like a big game for him, in a way; there's danger, and he's drunk on it, because it's something he has always wanted – a chance to break through the boredom, a test for his character, a way to demolish his weaknesses and build up his strengths.

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On the day he turns sixteen, Jack discovers that being strong is the greatest weakness of all.

The recon mission he and Dal have volunteered for goes to hell in a hand basket the moment they cross over into enemy territory. They're captured before they can lay their eyes on a single target and bundled off to the command center in the nearest border town. Jack and Dal huddle together in a cold room where their captors have left them, suddenly feeling their age, no longer brave young heroes but merely scared kids. They know that this is one battle they are not likely to win, and that there is no one coming to save them. They try to remain positive – they talk about food their mothers will cook for them when they come home, about the afternoons they will spend in their secret cove, school lessons they are missing, anything but the reality they're facing. Dal gives Jack a rock-hard pastry that's been in his pocket since last week as a substitute for birthday cake and Jack gnaws on it gratefully. He has almost choked it down when the door opens and their jailers march in and force them outside into the dark corridor, up some stairs and into a large, richly decorated room. Jack freezes on the threshold along with Dal, because they can't believe their eyes – the Intel officers had said that there are no Linargi on this planet, but Jack and Dal are staring at five of them. Dal grasps Jack's hand and squeezes it painfully, because this is bad, this is worse than anything they had imagined in the cell.

The Linargi are deceptively beautiful, and Jack feels almost dizzy with yearning as one of them comes close. The face worthy of a Roman statue remains carefully blank, and before Jack can say anything, the creature grasps his head, and he's screaming from the excruciating pain. It's as if the Linargi's fingers are digging into his brain, and sucking out his every thought and desire. The hands are suddenly gone, and he finds himself sprawled on the floor, blood seeping from his mouth, while he listens to Dal scream as the creature focuses on him. Dal collapses a moment later, sobbing quietly. Jack wants to tell Dal to stop crying, but he cannot, since he is on the brink of tears himself. He feels deathly tired, as exhausted as if he has run for a week without stopping, and the idea of closing his eyes and never waking up again is beginning to sound very tempting. Nevertheless, he forces himself to get up and pulls Dal up as well, because he won't give the bastards the satisfaction of seeing Coalition soldiers lying on the floor like dogs. They stand before the five beings, barely keeping themselves upright, and Jack forces himself to look in the eyes of the one who had inflicted that indescribable pain on their minds. The creature no longer looks beautiful to him, and he can see only its depravity, and he grins at it, because he suddenly understands that it can do nothing more to his mind. They stare at each other for several minutes, and then the Linargi's mouth curls into a perverse smile.

"You are strong inside, for a human," it says, its voice sweet and terrible all at once, and reaches a hand out towards Jack. Jack tenses up, and mentally prepares himself for pain. He doesn't want the pain, but there is no escape, nowhere to run. "You are of no interest to us."

Jack breathes a sigh of relief before a horrible thought hits him. Before he can throw himself at the leader and yell for Dal to run, the Linargi in front of him waves its hand and Jack falls to his knees. He tries to scream but not a single sound comes out of his mouth, his scream locked inside his mind. Dal goes quiet behind him, and Jack tenses his muscles, tries to snap out of the paralysis, tries to scream insults, but he remains motionless and silent. Dal appears in front of him, and Jack can see the naked fear in his eyes, and understands that the Linargi are controlling his body as well. Jack watches in horror as Dal collapses onto his knees in front of him, and screams silently as he sees several of the Linargi descend upon his friend, their marble-white hands perversely caressing Dal's face as his eyes brim with tears he cannot shed. Jack feels a cold hand on his cheek and cringes inside even though he's perfectly still.

"Watch," one of the creatures whispers into his ear in its sickly sweet voice, "watch, human, and learn, for you are more like us than you realize."

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When he staggers back into brigade headquarters three days later, Jack is a shadow. He doesn't see the distrustful glances from his fellow soldiers, doesn't feel that his feet are bleeding, doesn't taste the alcohol in the mug shoved into his hands. He sits silently on the gurney as the harried healer passes a mender over his wounds, and he delivers his report to the brigade leader in a monotone voice. The news of Linargi being present on the planet sends Intel into an uproar and Jack is dragged from commander to commander, forced to recount his tale again and again. He is allowed to return to his quarters by the end of the day, a shiny badge signifying his new rank (earned by his heroic conduct and by providing information vital to the armed forces, one of the commanders says) clipped to his bloodstained shirt. Jack goes back to the tent he has shared with Dal and sits on his bunk, unmoving, until several guys from the squad barge in, wanting to know what he has seen, wanting to know where Dal is, but Jack cannot tell them, because it is just too fresh, and every time he closes his eyes he can see Dal slowly dying, unable to even scream out his pain. "He's gone," he says, clasping his hands together again, fingers ghosting over bloody furrows that are no longer there. "Gone." And then he begins to laugh, because "gone" is not a word that can describe what happened to Dal, because there is no word yet thought up for what those creatures did to him.

******to be continued... **


End file.
